Want to Make a Difference? Tell a Story

Storytelling is one of the oldest and most effective forms of communication, and we still crave it today. From the earliest days of language, people told stories around campfires. Why? For entertainment, yes, and to be social. But they also told tales to communicate knowledge—to educate, and to persuade. “I want you to understand that you should not go over that mountain ridge. Trust me, bad things will happen.” Such words are not always convincing standing alone. (You know this if you’ve ever tried to instruct a teenager about, well, anything.) But, “Let me tell you a story of the ancient Grandmother from our tribe who ventured over that mountain and met wolves bigger than mastodons; she was never heard from again,” is different. That gets people’s attention. They draw closer and listen. They won’t forget.

If you’re reading this, you’re almost certainly a fiction writer, and you appreciate a good story. You probably can put words and sentences together well. You are a storyteller.

Congratulations. You have the tools to make a difference in the world. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a walk together.

Let’s start in 2016, with the election no one liked. Pretend you don’t know the outcome. Try to think back to late summer, early fall of that year. Can you think of what was missing from the presidential campaigns? (Remember, at this point, you know nothing about Russia.)

There was no Joe the Plumber in that election. There was no couple like Harry and Louise. Remember them? Joe the Plumber originated in the 2008 presidential election—a generic guy who wanted to buy a small plumbing business and who became a short-term conservative hero when he asked then-candidate Obama a question about small business taxes. Harry and Louise were purely fictional characters created in 1993, played by actors, to portray the average fortysomething couple considering various aspects of healthcare reform. They then appeared in television ads on and off through 2009.

Regardless of what you may have thought about these three characters, there’s no denying their effectiveness. The electorate paid attention. Candidates talked about policy and spit out attacks, but these characters offered personal stories to the electorate. They communicated, “Once upon a time I was a person just like you, this is what happened to me, here’s how candidate X would change that, and happily ever after.” (Sometimes it was “unhappily ever after.”) And people responded, “Yeah, I get that. Me, too.” The characters’ stories became short-hand for entire political positions, and for some, the candidates themselves.

Why?

Just as there’s a saying that all politics is local, a lesser-known axiom states that all politics is personal. People want to hear stories that reflect their own experiences, their own feelings, their own future possibilities. This shows empathy on the part of the candidate and lends his or her statements and promises credibility. But that element was missing in Election 2016. Hillary Clinton eventually brought out the story of Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, but it was too late by the time she did. And Donald Trump’s “story” of “forgotten people” (eerily reminiscent of the “forgotten men” in Sinclair Lewis’s It Can’t Happen Here) wasn’t a story. It was a caricature. But in the absence of a more complete story, people fit their own details into the shell.

Fast forward to the 2020 campaign. Did you watch the first Democratic debates? Think about the moment that led to Kamala Harris’s dominance of the two-night event. She told a super-quick, emphatic tale of busing and then: “That little girl was me.” In other words, she said, This is my story. BOOM.

Let’s delve a little deeper into the Democratic field. (We’re staying here because at the time of this writing, there’s a lot to work with. You can count all your fingers and toes and still not arrive at the total number of candidates.) Pete Buttigieg, for example. I can listen to Pete Buttigieg stories all day long, and it seems there’s an endless well of them. The one that first grabbed my attention—and I’m guessing I’m not alone in this crowd of writers—was the one about him learning Norwegian so he could read all the books written by an author he liked who had only published one book in English. Wow. Tell me more. All of these stories have worked: six months ago, most of us had never heard Mayor Pete’s name, but we sure as heck know who he is now.

Then there’s Cory Booker. Have you heard him tell the story about Virginia Jones, one of his life mentors? She lived in his building in Newark—the same building in which her son was murdered. Go listen to him if you get the chance. You will feel you know something meaningful about Senator Booker after he tells this story. It’s revelatory and when he’s done telling it, you’ll feel like he’s given you a gift. Senator Booker is—and I mean this in the best of ways—a skilled storyteller.

“That’s very nice,” I can hear you saying. “But I’m not a presidential candidate. I’m a fiction writer. How does this help me?”

First, as a writer, you possess the skills to create effective narratives on paper. You can tell someone’s story, bear witness and record it. You can write letters, op-eds and social media posts. You can make yourself heard.

And you can do more. You are a creator of stories. Think about what you’re trying to communicate with each of them.

In other words, do you have a message? If so, what is it, and for whom is it intended? Perhaps you don’t have a message; you’re writing purely to entertain people. Fine; just know that as you write. But maybe you’re trying to write a thriller about scientists who hide climate change evidence, or literary fiction that touches on the impact of sexual abuse. Don’t smack people over the head with your message, because then you’re writing a long essay, not a novel. Remember that readers are thirsty for the people and action in your story, not a lecture. But knowing why you’re writing your book can offer you guidance when you’re stuck. That knowledge can help you create structure, and assist you in figuring out what elements of your story to keep and what to throw out. It, along with other elements like character and plot development, can help you determine what’s important.

Mohsin Hamid struck this balance beautifully when he wrote a love story set against the world’s growing migrant population in Exit West. I first learned about the existence and peril of the Great Pacific garbage patch when I read The Man with the Compound Eyes by Wu Ming-Yi. These are only two of literally countless examples of fiction addressing real issues without preaching.

I want readers to care about the characters and their story in my WIP. But I also want to believe that by telling my characters’ story, I can communicate a message that will be important to someone else in the world. If I get the story right, it will touch readers in a way that makes them think just a tiny bit differently about an aspect of their lives. In a best-case scenario, it will offer a perspective shift, a moment of empathy—a tiny bubble of something like, “the person who seemed to act badly is actually good. Wow, what might that mean in my life?”

Story is a more powerful medium than we sometimes give it credit for. No matter what you’re writing, your storytelling and writing skills give you power. We are living in a time where we can see the history being written all around us. The news can be so discouraging day after day after day, but storytelling can improve that. Storytelling can entertain, and even as it does, it can empathize. Storytelling can witness as it provides temporary escape. Storytelling can expose, even as it offers ideas that become the catalysts for other ideas. Storytelling can appeal. Storytelling can question and strengthen. Storytelling can build up. Storytelling can change minds. Storytelling can offer a light in the darkness.

Storytelling is a superpower. How will you use your superpower?

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If anyone is interested in various writer-driven efforts to benefit and advocate for children and others being held in detention camps along the United States southern border, please let me know and I will get back to you with information.

Wish you could buy this author a cup of joe?

Tracy Hahn-Burkett has written everything from speeches for a U.S. senator to bus notes for her eighth-grade son. A former congressional staffer, U.S. Department of Justice lawyer and public policy advocate for civil rights, civil liberties and public education, Tracy traded suits for blue jeans and fleece when she moved to New Hampshire with her husband and two children. She writes the adoption and parenting blog, UnchartedParent, and has published dozens of essays, articles and reviews. Tracy is currently revising her first novel. Her website is TracyHahnBurkett.com.

I am 100% with you, Tracy! My first novel (Shelter Us) includes a story about a homeless mother and toddler, and the circumstances that led to that. My WIP tells the story of an unaccompanied minor from Guatemala, who unexpectedly came to be a part of my family, and how that connection has changed the course of all of our lives. I hope that a story about one girl, one family, will deepen our empathy for people fleeing terrible situations in their home countries, how they can flourish when given love and support.

Wonderful, inspiring piece. I agree that story is one of the most powerful tools we have to convey a moral vision of who we should be and how we should live. But as some of your examples make clear, there’s a dark side to that.

A few weeks ago I wrote a post here at WU on the TV miniseries “Chernobyl,” specifically about the debate about whether the series truly captured what happened. What was most fascinating, it turned out, was what the show’s writer had to say about story. He noted that we’re “drowning in narrative” and being “poisoned” by it because it increasingly is drowning out a honest, dogged search for truth. He conceded the show falsified certain details for the sake of dramatic power, but he then created a podcast about the actual facts (as well as they are known right now). Now that I’ve seen the show, the first thing that struck me was the opening sequence, when Legasov, the chief scientist investigating what happened to the reactor, makes an audio journal confession/suicide note (he’s dying of radiation poisoning) in which he says, “In the absence of facts, all we have are stories.”

The proliferation of conspiracy theories and their gruesome appeal to those who embrace them is an example of narrative going haywire (though not for those spreading the lies, of course). And “The Barbarians at the Gate,” a trope seen every day here in the US right now, is one of the four chief narratives of American political discourse according to former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

You are of course correct–stories can be an incredible force for good. I wonder how much of an impact on the civil rights movement TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD had on white people wavering on who to believe and who to stand with (much as UNCLE TOM’S CABIN did in antebellum America).

And yet there is no truth procedure for stories, except whatever lies in the heart and mind of the reader. Reviewers and critics and even readers can pick apart factual errors (Warning: NEVER put a Harley Davidson in a book unless you want to hear back about everything you got wrong), but that sort of peer review pales beside the one used in science. The power of story lies in how it makes people feel, and feelings, sadly, are notoriously resistant to fact-checking.

The implicit point in the saying “The pen is mightier than the sword” is that words are weapons. We need to be as cautious and circumspect in their use as we would a handgun. But if we let that fact scare us, to the point we decline to write, we surrender the field to those who would use those weapons for a far more insidious purpose.

There’s so much to unpack in your comment, I can’t possibly get to all of it. (I’ll note, though, that I haven’t seen Chernobyl, though I’ve heard a lot about it and it’s on my list.)

You’re of course correct about that dark side to story, and I’m glad you pointed it out. I don’t see it as the opposite of truth, which kind of seems like the way the Chernobyl writer is framing it, but more as a tool you can use to deliver truth, falsehood, or something in between. The writer has a great deal of choices to make regarding what to write about, what genre, format, etc. to use, what to keep and what to discard once she picks a form, etc. But ultimately, the writing goes to the reader and then it gets hard: is the reader an intended reader or someone else? Does the reader believe it? Take it in the sense it was intended? Does the reader read something between the lines that isn’t actually there? Will the reader manipulate it? We all know all of these things happen all the time.

So what’s a writer to do? Learn the tools of writing and narrative as well as he can and then do the best job he can when writing. Story changes minds; just make sure your stories say what you want them to say.

As you alluded: Legend has it that when Abraham Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he said, “So you’re the little woman that wrote the book that started this great war.” (Note that this book has since become disfavored due to its portrayal of racial issues.)

Hi Tracy.
No regular visitor to Writer Unboxed is going to take issue with your post on the power of story. But a clear distinction should be made between a clever, carefully rehearsed and perfectly timed soundbite kneecapping like Kamala Harris gave to Joe Biden, and the kinds of stories written by novelists. The whole point of the latter is to create characters, developed over hundreds of pages, in narratives of varying degrees of complexity. Instead of slapping people with a memorable phrase or personal anecdote, novelists must keep people engaged for hours. In a time when information is mostly delivered visually, let’s hear it for storytellers who hold readers long enough to give them more than a gotcha! moment.

You’ll get no argument from me. Those two forms are completely different, and thank goodness! Politics these days seems to have almost no room for nuance, and that’s so frustrating because problems are complex and often demand nuanced solutions. But novels are all about nuance. It’s blissful–both as a reader and a writer–to open the pages of a novel and settle into a world of characters and their actions, their thoughts, their settings, and, most notably, the subtle shades of what everything might or might not mean to people who won’t actually lose their health insurance in the real world. And yet, you can crystallize your thoughts about real issues even as you spend time in these worlds. If only politics afforded us this luxury!

Hi Tracy, My wife and I attended a dinner yesterday that I had been sort of dreading. The dinner was held at the private residence of a local chef, donated as “the prize” in a charity auction (raising money for a foundation that recruits therapy dogs).

My reluctance? There were eleven of us attending, and I knew that at least four of the group supported the far end of the political spectrum from mine. I was unsure about the leanings of all but my wife and one other couple. That might sound judgmental, but hey, these are divisive times, and the last thing I wanted on a summer Sunday was a Twitter-type debate (insert sound-bite attacks and counterattacks here), or a one-sided lecture by whoever turned out to be the most vocal among us. Been there, done that, thanks. I’ve rarely seen such “conversations” result in anything productive, but I’ve often seen them result in hard feelings.

Anyway, we had a lovely time through dinner (pointedly avoided any reference to politics all the while, with only a few close scrapes). After dinner, we sort of split into two groups over after-dinner drinks and coffees. A few of those in my group knew I was a writer, and the conversation turned to all things bookish. (Huzzah!) At some point the conversation shifted to our shared concern (or at least unease) over the trend toward focus on phones (or any devices) rather than books. I said that I’ve been focusing my charitable giving on literacy, and discussed the youth literacy groups I support. Someone asked me why I feel so strongly. I spoke a bit about not only fiction’s power to strengthen empathy, but to broaden empathy. There were lots of nodding heads.

Then one of the women in our circle–one of those who supports the other end of the political spectrum–started to tell us about her home-schooled grandchildren (I gather her family’s religious beliefs are behind their staunch home-schooling stance). She told us about a granddaughter who insisted she read a book that she’d read because of a joint home-school reading group. The book: The Warmth of Other Suns.

Our dining companion went on, in a very emotional way, to tell us how her perspective was so powerfully shaken and shifted. She’d attended a newly integrated school in Chicagoland, and she was seeing her own past experiences in a very new light. She’s become a fervent advocate, recommending the book not just to her other grandchildren, but to every reader she knows.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I continue to worry about the level of divisiveness of our national politics. But I came home from our dinner feeling heartened, with my belief in the power of story renewed.

Thanks for the reminder. Here’s to changing the world for the better, one story at a time.

Hi Vaughn. That is so encouraging! I love hearing stories like this. Although I know of this book, I haven’t read it, but it’s now going on my list. Empathy successfully created–this is precisely what I mean. Thank you for sharing this.

I stopped reading when the article called the 2016 election “the election nobody liked.” Tens of millions of people did like it, some more for who wasn’t elected than for who was, and to pretend they don’t exist is a crippling blindness that shouldn’t be encouraged.

You can’t engage with people, and therefore can’t tell them a story, if you’re dead set on pretending they’re non-existent. And your story can’t change hearts or minds unless you respect the audience.

I’m sorry you stopped reading early in the piece. What I’m discussing here is storytelling as a way of communicating a political or social message. That “technique” is available for you to use regardless of where you fall on the political spectrum. This is what I tell students who take or even just inquire about my Writing for Advocacy classes. Storytelling is for everyone.

As for the election, if you take a mental trip back, before we knew any outcome, you may recall that the vast majority of people in both parties–and independents–were appalled at the tenor of the campaigns. I’m sure there were a few exceptions to that condition. But for the most part, people couldn’t wait for it to end. That’s what I was referring to.

Whatever one’s political leanings, the debate over this post demonstrates the reasoned, point-for-point discussion issue-oriented narratives ought to inspire. Political campaigns, like other forms of advertising, rely on slogans, sound bites and caricature. That’s fine for beer commercials, shaky ground for choosing the leaders of our country. Novels that tackle serious social issues through realistic, relatable characters are one antidote. Unfortunately, it takes more time, effort, and honesty on the reader’s part to appreciate a 300-page novel than a 30-second TV ad.

Yes, Christine, it does take more effort. But here’s an added point: once you get someone to open your novel, you’ve already gone part of the way in convincing that audience. Someone is already willing to hear what you have to say. (Your writing has to be compelling enough to keep that person engaged, but now we’re walking into a different set of posts…) There’s a big difference between someone who’s completely closed to new messages and someone who is willing to listen. In advocacy, I just don’t worry about the first category. I can’t. The ROI is too small, if it exists at all, and putting effort there will waste time when I could be talking with the second category, which is usually bigger, anyway. If we’re talking about a novel, something about your back-cover copy has already pulled the reader; she’s already interested. Bring your message into it with respect for that reader (e.g., no preaching, know your readers will come from all circumstances, story comes first, etc.), and you’ve got lots of room for nuance.

There are ways to tell stories in political campaigns, but you’re right: they’re short on nuance. Maybe someday, that will change. I hope so.

I haven’t figured out the marketing side of it yet (how to get people to read what you’ve written), but the whole point of the story I’m telling with my mainstream trilogy is that readers have made certain decisions about characters and these stereotypes are wrong.

Take this one: ‘older woman.’ What image comes to mind? What are your assumptions about who she is, how she got to be that way, and, especially, who she is allowed to love?

Here’s another: ‘person with a chronic illness.’ Same questions, except you have to also ask whether this person is entitled to love a healthy person or be loved by a healthy person, and/or whether this person should remove themself from the dating population, or even the living population?

Harriet Beecher Stowe is one of my heros – as is Anna Sewell (Black Beauty) – because both took on the stereotypes of their day and didn’t give in to them. The superpower is to make the ‘other’ someone you empathize with and want to win. Not someone you pity.

It is far easier to write stories about healthy young deserving characters that readers identify with quickly – because they reinforce the stereotypes so well. It is also easier to use your diverse characters as sidekicks and friends of the main character, instead of writing about them.

But it’s more important not to let ‘easy’ characters dissuade writers from creating the hard ones, the ones who change minds.

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Thanks for this reminder about the power of story. When I get depressed about the current state of the “real” world and take refuge in writing, I often feel like I’m running away—even as I try to propose solutions that may apply more widely than just within the tiny fictional worlds I create. It’s also a reminder to listen to the soundbite versions of story with an ear toward “what is s/he trying to sell?” All too often, the answer is, simply, “ME!”